100,000+ Books, Games & Puzzles in-stock πŸ‡³πŸ‡Ώ

New on the blog! πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅ Japanese Healing Fiction & β˜• The Perfect Winter Reads

Lost in a Good Book

Thursday Next Book 2
Series: Thursday Next
4.13 goodreads logo

Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.

Check link for latest rating.
( 55,992 ratings, 3,257 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
In Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, the protagonist, Thursday Next, navigates a peculiar world where literature and reality blur. Tasked with ensuring the integrity of great works, she discovers conspiracies threatening both fictional and real worlds. As she faces bureaucratic challenges and menacing forces, Thursday becomes embroiled in a thrilling quest that tests her wit and resilience.
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK Please add to wishlist to be notified when back in stock

Sorry, we're currently out of stock of Lost in a Good Book. Please add to your Wishlist and we'll send you an email as soon as it's back in stock.

Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you love a unique blend of crime, thriller, and fantastical elements, where the boundaries between literature and reality blur intriguingly. It's ideal for readers who appreciate wit, clever literary references, and a protagonist diving into a world where books provide a doorway to adventure and mystery.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

Jasper Fforde's hit follow-up to THE EYRE AFFAIR, now available in stunning new jacket style.

Jasper Fforde's hit follow-up to THE EYRE AFFAIR, now available in stunning new jacket style.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde follows Thursday Next, a literary detective and newlywed, as she embarks on an adventure that begins, quite literally, on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime is responsible.

The sinister Goliath Corporation wants its operative Jack Schitt out of the poem in which Thursday trapped him, and it will do almost anything to achieve this. But bribing the ChronoGuard? Is that possible?

Having barely caught her breath after The Eyre Affair, Thursday must battle corrupt politicians, try to save the world from extinction, and help the Neanderthals with species self-determination. Mastodon migrations, journeys into Just William, a chance meeting with the Flopsy Bunnies, and violent life-and-death struggles in the summer sales are all part of a greater plan.

But whose? And why?

Series: Thursday Next

View all
  • The Eyre Affair
    There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits, and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of Jane Eyre. In this world, there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, and a great interest in all things literary...
    Paperback
    $2199
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • First Among Sequels
    Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation. Her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marple are found dead, stopping their series...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Well Of Lost Plots
    Leaving Swindon behind her to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots, the place where all fiction is created, Thursday Next, Literary Detective and soon-to-be one-parent family, ponders her next move from within an unpublished book of dubious merit entitled Caversham Heights. Landen, her husband, is still eradicated, Aornis Hades is meddling with Thursday's memory, and Miss Havishamβ€”when not...
    Paperback
    $2499
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • One of our Thursdays is Missing
    It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld, or is this something more sinister? All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Something Rotten
    Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde follows the adventures of Thursday Next, Head of JurisFiction and ex-SpecOps agent, as she returns to her native Swindon. Accompanied by a two-year-old child, a pair of dodos, and Hamletβ€”who is on a fact-finding mission in the real worldβ€”Thursday is tasked with capturing the escaped Fictioneer Yorrick Kaine. Simultaneously, she seizes the opportunity to retrieve...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Pre-order
    Dark Reading Matter
    The final novel in the highly acclaimed and beloved Thursday Next series. Will Thursday find her happy ending? The Dark Reading Matter is a theoretical realm that suggests that the observable bookverse can only account for 20% of the calculated total readable mass. Out there somewhere, possibly, is a larger and more expansive and unseeable 'Dark Bookverse' that contains millions...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    Pre-order
    Out 13 Oct 2026
  • Lost in a Good Book
    Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde follows Thursday Next, a literary detective and newlywed, as she embarks on an adventure that begins, quite literally, on her own doorstep. It seems that Landen, her husband of four weeks, actually drowned in an accident when he was two years old. Someone, somewhere, sometime is responsible. The sinister Goliath Corporation wants...
    Paperback
    Sold Out

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde has received praise for its originality and wit, drawing comparisons to authors like J.K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, and Lewis Carroll. Reviewers have highlighted its blend of humour and clever storytelling, noting its ability to entertain through both literary references and imaginative plot twists. The narrative is described as a joy to read, filled with wit and a sense of whimsy that appeals to book lovers and those seeking an inventive, humorous escape.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780340733578

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 18 July 2002

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Hodder Paperback

Illustration: none

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 25.0mm

Width: 142.0mm

Height: 197.0mm

Weight: 271g

Pages: 384

About the Author

Jasper Fforde is the author of three hit Thursday Next novels. After a varied career in the film industry, he now lives and works in Wales and has a passion for aviation.

Also by Jasper Fforde

View all
  • Early Riser
    The Sunday Times Bestseller 'Fforde pours his brilliant imagination into every corner of this world' Daily Mail 'Fforde keeps the puns and neologisms coming thick and fast while exploring every facet of his novel's intriguing premise' Financial Times Every Winter, the human population hibernates. During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Eyre Affair
    There is another 1985, somewhere in the could-have-been, where the Crimean war still rages, dodos are regenerated in home-cloning kits, and everyone is deeply disappointed by the ending of Jane Eyre. In this world, there are no jet-liners or computers, but there are policemen who can travel across time, a Welsh republic, and a great interest in all things literary...
    Paperback
    $2199
    Elsewhere:
    $2499
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Great Troll War
    The final instalment of the Last Dragonslayer Chronicles, demonstrating that with a small band of committed followers, a large tin of resolve and steely determination, almost anything can be achieved... Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Strange and her sidekick and fellow Orphan, Tiger Prawns, have been driven to the tip of the UnUnited Kingdoms - Cornwall - by the invasion of the Trolls....
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Shades of Grey
    β€˜Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett’ Independent Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • First Among Sequels
    Fourteen years after her last adventure, Thursday Next, literary detective, finds herself in an unusual situation. Her job policing the fictional characters of the BookWorld has been downgraded since her previous escapades are now themselves in print. However, a pressing threat may call her back into action: first Sherlock Holmes and then Miss Marple are found dead, stopping their series...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Well Of Lost Plots
    Leaving Swindon behind her to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots, the place where all fiction is created, Thursday Next, Literary Detective and soon-to-be one-parent family, ponders her next move from within an unpublished book of dubious merit entitled Caversham Heights. Landen, her husband, is still eradicated, Aornis Hades is meddling with Thursday's memory, and Miss Havishamβ€”when not...
    Paperback
    $2499
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Shades of Grey
    Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place. Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • The Big Over Easy
    It's Easter in Reading – a bad time for eggs – and no one can remember the last sunny day. Humpty Dumpty, well-known nursery favourite, large egg, ex-convict and former millionaire philanthropist, is found shattered beneath a wall in a shabby area of town. Following the pathologist's careful reconstruction of Humpty's shell, Detective Inspector Jack Spratt and his Sergeant Mary...
    Paperback
    $2799
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • One of our Thursdays is Missing
    It is a time of unrest in the BookWorld. Only the diplomatic skills of ace literary detective Thursday Next can avert a devastating genre war. But a week before the peace talks, Thursday vanishes. Has she simply returned home to the RealWorld, or is this something more sinister? All is not yet lost. Living at the quiet end of speculative...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Red Side Story
    Jasper Fforde, the acclaimed SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER, invites you to imagine a world where your position in society depended on what bit of the colour spectrum you could see... It's the UK, but not as we know it: civilisation has rebuilt after an unspoken 'Something that Happened' five hundred years before. Society is now colour-based, the strict levels...
    Paperback
    $2600
    Elsewhere:
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Last Dragonslayer
    In the good old days, magic was powerful, unregulated by government, and even the largest spell could be woven without filling in magic release form B1-7g. Then the magic started fading away. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Strange runs Kazam!, an employment agency for soothsayers and sorcerers. But work is drying up. Drain cleaner is cheaper than a spell, and even magic carpets...
    Paperback
    $2799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Fourth Bear
    The Gingerbreadman β€” psychopath, sadist, convicted murderer and cake/biscuit β€” is loose on the streets of Reading. It isn't Jack Spratt's case. Despite the success of the Humpty Dumpty investigation, the well-publicised failure to prevent Red Riding-Hood and her Gran being eaten once again plunges the Nursery Crime Division into controversy. Enforced non-involvement with the Gingerbreadman hunt looks to be...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks

More from Crime & Thriller

View all
  • New Release
    It Could Have Been Her
    PREPARE TO BE HOOKED: The no. 1Β Sunday TimesΒ and MULTI-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new spine tingling thriller. It was the night she almost died. Jane Trevally, newly divorced and feeling a little lost, agrees to accompany a man she doesn't know to his house in the darkest corner of Hampstead Heath. She's offered a drink, goes in, and...
    Paperback
    $3000
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    26 Beauties
    The twenty-sixth thrilling novel in the globally bestselling Women's Murder Club series. Beautiful young women are disappearing by the dozen. A celebration is cut short when a concerned father crashes Detective Inspector Lindsay Boxer's party. His daughter is missing - and she's not the only one. DI Lindsay Boxer has been tracking a chilling pattern: a Jane Doe washed ashore,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    The Secrets We Hide
    The stunning new North Falls thriller by the bestselling author ofΒ We Are All Guilty Here 'Quite simply, Karin Slaughter is the best of us' Dervla McTiernan Welcome back to North Falls -- a small town with big secrets. The house at 1601 Iris Drive looks like any other in the quiet, residential street. But rumours are rife about the Vickery...
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • Hope Rises
    'BALDACCI IS STILL PEERLESS' - THE SUNDAY TIMES REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . . Walter Nash, working under the alias of Dillon Hope, is on the road to revenge after becoming an informant for the FBI against a global criminal operation headed up by Victoria Steers. Steers has ripped everything Nash held dear away from him....
    Paperback
    $3099
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    Slash
    A year after a brutal shootout left her lover dead, ex-police sergeant Honey Chalmers is a hot mess, drinking too much and eating too little, working casual gigs for a shady firm of private investigators β€” while holding conversations with a ghost. A desperate father asks her to investigate his missing son β€” a double-murder suspect last seen during the...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    A River Red With Blood
    The players call it the Game, and its aim is simple: to abduct and kill a stranger without getting caught. They're very good at it. They've been playing it for a long time. And they can keep playing as long as everyone sticks to the rules: No Killing Close to Home and No Killing Outside the Game. But those rules...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Shadow Step
    The new Detective Miller thriller from bestselling author Mark Billingham, full of tension, wit and incredible twists. The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ('in the shadow') Typically, such a step perfectly demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3799
    Backorder
    Ships mid August
  • New Release
    Some Sort of Justice
    The first time in print for the million-copy-selling crime writer. This time, a cast of good coppers, a wily ex-detective and a shadowy, well-connected operative are brought together by an aristocratic fatality. Only there's no body, no forensicsβ€”and enemies in the highest places. When Caroline Thorpe succeeded in casting doubt on the verdict of the inquest into her brother's death,...
    Paperback
    $3199
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • The Ending Writes Itself
    Secrets don't stay secret for long in publishing Six authors. One private island. Seventy-two hours to write the ending that will change their lives. β€˜This is a house of novelists, not murderers. You dream up crimes. You don’t commit them.’ β€˜But a writer has. And so, who better than a writer to catch them?’ World famous author Arthur Fletch is...
    Paperback
    $2800
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (2)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • New Release
    Neighbourhood Watch
    Neighbourhood Watch is a sharp, stylish thriller with a killer opening hook, a generous dose of dark humour, and a truly distinctive voice. ― Christian White The annual Curlew Street scarecrow competition is back, and the residents of Melbourne’s inner north have never seen an entry like it. Shirt bloody, head and arms slumped over a scarecrow crucifix: Victoria’s most...
    Paperback
    $2999
    Elsewhere:
    $3699
    (1)
    In Stock
    Ships Monday
  • For All the Dead Girls
    Tough and gutsy PI Lou Alcott returns with a terrifyingly gritty new case that takes her deep into the dark web. Perfect for fans of Jacqueline Bublitz and Jane Caro. While juggling a missing person case with unexpected ties close to home and saving an innocent woman and her child from a dangerous domestic situation, Lou ends up in the...
    Paperback
    $2899
    Elsewhere:
    $3499
    (1)
    Available
    Ships in 4-6 weeks
  • Don’t Let Him In
    Prepare to be hookedβ€”the no. 1 Sunday Times and multi-million-copy bestselling author is back with a brand-new, spine-tingling thriller. He's the perfect man. He says he loves you. You think he might even be made for you. Before long he's moved into your houseβ€”and into your heart. And then he leaves for days at a time. You don't know where...
    Paperback
    $3200
    Elsewhere:
    $3800
    In Stock
    Ships Monday

Why buy from us?

Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!

Service & Delivery

Service & Delivery

Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 80,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.

Auckland Bookstore

Auckland Bookstore

We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.

Our Gifting Service

Our Gifting Service

Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.